Caging the Lyon

by H A CULLEY

  For a little while Marjorie did little but mourn her husband’s death but then, two days after the funeral, she was forced to face the future when the sheriff of Nottingham and Derbyshire arrived to investigate the murder. Sir William FitzRanulph was one of the many bastard sons of the late Earl Ranulph of Chester. Neither of them knew it but Ranulph was Marjorie’s uncle as her mother, Guy’s wife, had been abducted and raped by another of the earl’s illegitimate sons before Guy had killed him and rescued her mother.

  The sheriff was about thirty years of age, taller than average but with a small head and rather sunken eyes. He had brought Sir Ralph Dubois and four of his serjeants with him. Marjorie had met Ralph several times before as he had been given the manor of Hathersage when Sir Robert of Locksley, a protégé of Waldo’s predecessor, Guy, had been deprived of it. She had found Ralph a pleasant enough man, though she resented him replacing Robert as lord of the manor. Robert had been Guy’s squire for seven years and she had grown up knowing him well and liking him more than a little. Had he shown any interest in her she might have been his wife instead of Waldo’s but, as she was only seven when they first met, Robert had always thought of her as a little sister rather than a potential lover.

  ‘My lady, I was very sorry to hear of your husband’s death. I am sure that the king will also grieve when the news reaches him in Normandy. I know that he was fond of Sir Waldo, after all they grew up together.’ Sir William’s condolences rang hollow in Marjorie’s ears: he was going through the motions, nothing more.

  ‘You are kind to say so, Sir William. Do you know who killed him?’ She knew in her heart that it was Robert of Locksley. He had sworn to be revenged on both the king and Waldo when he lost Hathersage. But she wondered how much the sheriff knew.

  ‘That is what I have come here to find out, my lady. Rest assured that we will bring the fiend to justice.’ He shifted uncomfortably. They were sitting with Ralph by the fire in the great hall and, although the servants were giving them a wide berth as they set up the trestle tables for dinner, they were no doubt straining to catch every word. He leaned closer.

  ‘It pains me to have to say this so soon after your bereavement, Lady Marjorie,’ he said quietly, ‘but I need to appoint a new constable of this castle and deputy to myself.’

  ‘Oh!’ Marjorie hadn’t thought of this. This was her home only as the constable’s lady, now that Waldo was dead he would have to be replaced. She didn’t know it but exactly the same situation had faced Guy FitzRichard, her supposed father, as a boy when his father had been killed at the Battle of the Standard.

  ‘Yes, of course. Please forgive me. I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘No doubt the king will make you his ward as you are now heiress to Sir Waldo’s manors; until, that is, he finds a new husband for you.’ William FitzRanulph rather prided himself on his forthrightness. Others thought him insensitive and tactless.

  ‘Oh, no. I don’t think that can be correct.’

  ‘I assure you it is, Madam.’ The sheriff didn’t like to be contradicted.

  ‘No, you don’t understand. I am with child so it is the child who will be Sir Waldo’s heir. That is the law, is it not?’ She smiled sweetly at Sir William who looked bemused and then irritated. She had a feeling that he probably had someone who he wanted to reward in mind as her future husband. From the disappointed look on Ralph Dubois’s face she had a fair idea who the intended husband might be.

  ‘I will move myself and my unborn child to the hall at Edale as soon as I am able.’ She paused and then asked naïvely ‘may I be permitted to know who the new constable is?’

  ‘It’s Sir Ralph here,’ William answered distractedly. He was still reviewing the implications of Waldo’s unborn heir. The woman was quite correct, of course; Waldo’s child would inherit, though it might be a girl. For a moment he thought that he might press Marjorie to betroth the unborn baby to Ralph, but he realised that would be going a bit too far.

  ‘I’m tired and still distraught over my husband’s death, Sir William. I hope you will forgive me if I retire to my solar and take my meal there.’

  ‘Of course, my lady.’ He and Ralph stood as the fourteen year old Marjorie swept out of the great hall with all the dignity of a queen.

  ‘I’m sorry, my boy,’ William said as soon as he and Ralph were alone. ‘It seems you will have to make do with just being constable.’

  ‘But that means I remain her vassal if she becomes guardian of Waldo’s brat, instead of her lord,’ he complained. Ralph was referring to the fact that the lord of the manor of Hathersage was merely a tenant of the king’s tenant-in-chief, who held all four manors in the area. It was a difficult situation as he would owe military service to Marjorie and her child as his overlord, though no doubt she would accept scutage in lieu.

  ‘It can’t be helped. The king was fond of Sir Waldo: he was his squire before becoming the captain of his bodyguard. He will be furious about his death and no doubt he will expect me to catch and hang the culprit quickly. I will have to treat de Cuille’s widow with care. I have no intention of losing my position over this, and I suggest you tread carefully too.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who was responsible for killing him?’

  ‘Oh, it was Robert of Locksley without a doubt. He has made a no secret of his desire for revenge after losing Hathersage. Furthermore few knights can use a bow well, but this man can by all accounts. Knowing who the culprit is and catching him are two different things though.’

  Two days later Marjorie moved out of the castle and took up residence in the hall at Edale. Guy FitzRichard had turned it into a small fortress during the civil war between Stephen and King Henry’s mother. Although law and order had now returned to the land she still felt safer sleeping somewhere which was designed for defence. Then she realised with a start that Guy would not know of Waldo’s death. The next day she sent her most reliable serjeant with a message to Berwick Castle, where Guy was now serving the king of Scots as its constable.

  Four months later she gave birth to twins: a son who she called Waldo, after the baby’s dead father, and a daughter, who she named Margaret after her mother.

  ~#~

  Robert of Locksley had expected to feel triumphant after he had killed Waldo but instead he just felt empty. King Henry was in Normandy so Robert’s chance of wreaking vengeance on him seemed remote. In any case, as killing Waldo hadn’t made him feel any better, his desire for revenge had waned. After leaving Hathersage with his squire, John Little, he had returned to his father’s manor of Locksley but it was plain that his eldest brother felt that the shorter his stay was the happier he would be. His brother had already persuaded their other brother to leave home and seek his fortune in Sicily, where a Norman had just come to the throne.

  Another factor was the sheriff. He had heard rumours that he was investigating the killing personally. This was not unexpected but it did mean that Robert would have to leave Locksley before the sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire thought of asking his counterpart in Yorkshire to seek him at Locksley. Besides, he didn’t want to get his family into trouble for sheltering him. He toyed with the idea of joining his brother in Sicily but it might be rather difficult for him to leave the country. It wasn’t easy for a man with a price on his head to gain the necessary written permissions to board a ship.

  In any case he had decided on a way to make the king pay for the loss of Hathersage. It was John Little who gave him the idea. Although John’s father was a yeoman and was, if not rich, at least well off, he did have relatives who lived in poverty and often came close to starving during a bad winter.

  John’s idea was that they should deprive the king of some of his taxes and use the money to buy food for those who didn’t have enough to eat. He was specifically thinking of his own extended family but Robert saw this as a chance to do some good over a larger area. However, he would need more men to help him and herein lay the first problem. There were outlaws in places like Sherwood Fo
rest and other uninhabited areas set aside as the royal hunting forests but they were untrustworthy villains to a man and would keep for themselves anything they managed to steal. There was also the odd small band of mercenaries left behind after the Anarchy ended, though most had either been eliminated or secured proper employment as men-at-arms by now. No, Robert decided, he needed to recruit men who shared his ideals.

  But first he needed a secure base. He pondered the problem for some time before he came to the conclusion that he should investigate the vastness of the royal hunting forest of Sherwood. This stretched across Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and, although there was quite a lot of open country and scrubland in the forest, there was also large areas covered by trees. Sherwood was home to several bands of robbers so he would need enough men to persuade the existing outlaws to ply their trade elsewhere. Eventually he decided to begin his recruitment with the villagers of Locksley.

  Cautiously, so that his father and brother didn’t realise what he was up to, he approached the young single bondsmen and carefully sounded them out. Their current existence was little more than a struggle for survival so they had nothing to lose. They were allowed to farm one or more small strips of land which, in most cases, barely provided them with subsistence living and, in return, they had to work for the lord of the manor certain days each month. None were trained in the use of weapons, but they could be taught.

  Over the next month Robert paid several visits to Sheffield where he bought half a dozen longbows, several quivers of arrows, two swords, a selection of daggers and several boar spears. These were hidden in the loose thatch roofing of the hovels where his bondsmen lived. Finally, he purchased a dark brown tent which could hold the eight of them until they found a permanent base and could build proper shelters.

  A few days before he planned to leave Locksley Robert and John went hunting. His squire was a big lad for fifteen and promised to be as tall, if not taller, than his father, who stood a good six inches above the average. The sobriquet “Little” was, of course, given in jest. He had a pleasant round face with the beginnings of a beard. As he was fair haired, like many of Saxon descent, this hardly showed at the moment. He had two passions in life: hunting and adventure, and his present life indulged both. He was also completely loyal to Robert, whom he admired enormously.

  An hour after they had left the village a knight and four serjeants wearing the badge of the sheriff of Yorkshire arrived at the hall accompanied by Sir Ralph Dubois, the Derbyshire deputy sheriff. Robert’s father came out to greet them and the sheriff’s knight dismounted before handing him a warrant for Robert’s arrest on a change of murder. They didn’t accept his word that his son was not there and proceeded to search the village. Eventually Ralph was satisfied that Robert wasn’t hiding anywhere and they returned to the hall to await his return. The lord of Locksley was furious that his word had been doubted but he held his tongue. If his youngest son was seized at the manor he might well be charged with harbouring a fugitive. He couldn’t even warn him as one of the serjeants stood by the only door to prevent anyone leaving.

  Robert and John were returning to the village carrying a doe on a pole when they spotted a soldier leaving the hall to use the latrine. Robert had a fair idea who he might be before he spotted the device of the Yorkshire sheriff on his gambeson. He and John melted back into the woods and waited for dark.

  Three hours later they crept into the village and roused the six bondsmen who had agreed to join them. Having carefully retrieved the weapons, the tent and a small chest of cash, they were on the point of making good their escape when the knight came out of the hall and started towards the latrine. Unfortunately this lay on the outskirts of the village just beyond where they crouched. Robert cursed silently, he was bound to see them in the moonlight and give the alarm.

  ~#~

  Sir Guy read the message from Marjorie with dismay. He had hated leaving the High Peak but he didn’t blame Waldo in the least for his misfortune; that was purely down to Henry Plantagenet, and perhaps to some extent his slimy lord chancellor, Tomas Beckett. His main reaction was concern for Marjorie and for the child she was expecting. Although she was not his daughter by blood, he was fond of her and worried about her. The next day he had his scrivener write back to Marjorie expressing his condolences and asking if there was anything he could do. Then he put her out of his mind; he had enough to worry about as it was.

  King Malcolm IV was still a boy and there were many in Scotland who sought to take advantage of a weak central authority. Somerled, lord of Argyll and the Isles, had led a revolt the previous year that had nearly reached Glasgow before he was forced to retire to deal with an invasion of his own lands by the king of Man. Now Colin MacHeth had laid claim to the earldom of Ross in the north and Fergus, lord of Galloway, was fighting Robert de Brus, lord of Annandale, over a land dispute. Some months previously Malcolm had found in favour of de Brus but Fergus hadn’t accepted the king’s decision and had seized the disputed lands by force.

  None of this had yet affected Berwick or Guy’s barony of Craigmor directly but he was aware of some dissent within the castle garrison at Berwick over his appointment. Not all Scots were enamoured of Malcolm’s recruitment of Normans or his gift to them of lands. In this Malcolm was following his grandfather’s long established policy, but that didn’t make it a popular one.

  April 1159 had been a wet month which made travelling unpleasant so Guy had left it until May to visit Craigmor to see how the building work progressed and to visit his horse stud. His wife, Emma, was expecting their third child soon and so she stayed behind at Berwick.

  At Craigmor the masons had constructed the outer gatehouse which, with the palisade and ditch that ran between each side of the stone gatehouse and the edge of the sheer cliffs that dropped away to the sea below, made the outer bailey secure. Later Guy would build a stone wall with a parapet to replace the palisade. The masons were now concentrating on the two towers at each end of the main fortification that would protect the inner bailey and be part of the accommodation in the castle. Each tower would be four storeys high as a home for Guy’s steward and his family in one and for Edmund of Winchester, the constable, in the other. At the moment both were sharing the main tower which in due course would accommodate Guy and his family when they visited. For now Edmund moved out so Guy could use his room and the constable moved into a curtained off area in the great hall, a timber building which had been constructed in the inner bailey.

  The horses Guy had brought with him from Edale had settled in well and a good number of foals had already been born since their arrival at Craigmor. War horses were in demand in Scotland and several trained destriers and coursers had been sold already, which would help replenish Guy’s coffers. Palfreys were far less popular as they were seen as a bit too well bred to be suited to the rugged Scottish countryside so Guy decided to send those which were ready to his uncle at Harbottle for sale to the nobility of Northumberland.

  When he returned to Berwick three weeks later it was to find that he had just become a father again, this time of a daughter. She had a crop of fine blond hair so they decided to call her Blanche, meaning pure and white. A few days later a messenger arrived to say that Marjorie has also given birth but in her case it was to twins– a boy and a girl. The boy was to be called Waldo after his father and the girl Margaret after Marjorie’s mother. Guy reflected that the birth of a boy had been a godsend. Little Waldo would now be the tenant-in-chief with his mother as his guardian. Had it just been a baby daughter she would have been an heiress who King Henry could have given in marriage in due course to someone who was only interested in her manors.

  Guy and Emma were attending Blanche’s baptism when a messenger arrived from Malcolm with a summons for Guy to join the king at Moffatt, bringing with him his knights and thirty men. Malcolm had settled the dispute with Colin MacHeth by confirming him as earl of Ross and he now intended to lead an expedition into Galloway against Fergus. Guy sent for Duncan
de Keith and told him to prepare his equipment for campaign. Three days later he led his men though the hills and up the Tweed valley to Moffatt, leaving Emma in charge at Berwick, assisted by his senior serjeant, a man called Duff.

  A week later Emma was with five year old Simon, the baby and her wet-nurse in the solar when Duff walked in unannounced accompanied by several armed men, herding three of the pages Emma had recently engaged in front of them.

  ‘What do you think you are doing? How dare you burst in here unannounced, Duff?’ Emma tried to hide her fear beneath the outrage she genuinely felt.

  ‘Dinna fesh yersel, woman. We’ll no hairm ye if ye da as ye’re told,’ one of Duff’s henchmen told her with a leer on his face that belied his words.

  Duff motioned for the pages to go and stand behind their mistress. ‘This castle now belongs to Máel Coluim, the true Ard Righ.’ He tutted at Emma’s obvious lack of comprehension. ‘King of Scots to you.’

  Emma recalled hearing Guy say something about Máel Coluim having been a pretender to the crown who had opposed his uncle, King David, when the latter had seized the throne in 1124. However, she was fairly sure that someone had told her that Máel Coluim was a prisoner in Roxburgh Castle, so she couldn’t quite see what Duff hoped to gain by his actions. Suddenly she looked around her with mounting concern.

  ‘Where’s Nicholas?’ Emma cried in alarm. Her eldest son was seven and a short while ago he had gone down to the stables to ride the new pony his father had bought him for his birthday.

  ‘We can’t find him, nor one of your pages. Maybe they’re hiding; maybe they’ve run. They’ll regret it when we do find them though.’ Duff told her grimly.